Ooltewah High School tile

Jim Jarvis

County maintenance crews are working this morning to fix a water leak at Ooltewah High School.

Reports of raw sewage leaking into several classrooms at the school are false, said Principal Jim Jarvis.

"That's not the case," he said. "We had the filter on a fountain that malfunctioned, and we did have a check valve on a commode that had hung up and caused it to continuously run, but there was no raw sewage."

Jarvis said reports of urine-tainted water stemmed from the discolored water leaking from the fountain.

He also said no students have missed any classes, and everything will be cleaned up and fixed by the end of the day.

"We moved the students from one classroom area to another classroom while they were working on it," he said, "but no student has missed any class."